Horrible Sonic Tech & Where to buy???

[tnt89868]

I've been having horrible Fusion performance(phone and DSL) so I had Sonic send a tech to my house for diagnosis. He determined that my house wiring was the culprit. I didn't agree w/ him because I had 2 lines going into the house(1 is 28ys old and 1 only 5yrs old). He said that they are bad but 2 lines going bad at same time didn't make sense to me. I order my own test kit from ebay and finally receive did my own troubleshooting this weekend. It turns out that the junction box is bad. I can't seem to find anyplace selling this. Anybody know where? I am using the line perfectly directly connected to ATT line but I don't want to use it this way w/o the grounding wire that was on the junction box. Good thing I didn't trust their tech, rewiring the house would have cost a bunch of money.

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[wa2ibm]

What you've got there is a decades old lightning arrester. There is a spark gap under each of the four bolts in the center of this thing and moisture and any number of other things can induce noise on your line, which is probably what's going on.

If that's what is on the side of your house, then call AT&T and have them install a modern Network Interface Device (NID) instead. They shouldn't charge you for it, since all service entrances these days are required to have a NID with a user friendly test jack inside. The Sonic tech should have recognized this and suggested the change.

If, on the other hand, this is just a junction point located beyond an existing NID, then simply remove it and tie the wires together, since the NID already has the lightning arresters inside.

[thulsa_doom]

On a Fusion circuit, calling us up in Support is the correct route to a new NID. Funky old lightning arresters are not that uncommon in field work, so I'm surprised our tech didn't find and bypass it. Where is it physically located? Near where the telephone wires reach the building? Or tucked away somewhere we failed to check?

[tnt89868]

The tech tested the ATT side of line w/o connecting it to the lightning arrester(as you guys call it) but tested both my lines w/ the lightning arrester which seem strange to me. Not my job so I didn't question at the time. The more I thought about it, it didn't make any sense so I bought a test telephone kit from ebay. 1st step connect clips to ATT side of line w/o lightning arrester and dial phone is perfect. 2nd step hook ATT side to lightning arrester and test clips to the terminal of arrester and no dial tone at all. Knew right away that the lightning arrester was the culprit. Finally found another lightning arrester on ebay and now DSL and phone is working great.

Btw, this stuff is in the box on the side of my house. If a new NID is needed then the tech should have done that but all he said that it was old technology(lightning arrester) which I knew already since the house is 28yrs old..

[dane]

Was the tech who came out Sonic staff or an AT&T tech?